KOP recieved 11 days late

[Pat Major]

Rookie Team 3368 recieved thier KOP yesterday, eleven days after Kickoff, they are located in Bosnia, customs was the hold up. Should FIRST extend thier build deadline 11 days?

[midway78224]

I think they should. They horrible to get your kop 11 days after kickoff. At least give them a 11 day grace period for the 11 days they lost.

[Jared Russell]

I do not think they should. Even if their kit was late, the beginning of build season is more about design and strategy than it is cutting metal.

As it is, the fabrication rules this year do allow quite a bit of work to continue even after the ship date - this should help ease the 11 days without a kit.

Still sucks that it got there so late.

[Vikesrock]

If they got the game on time then I definitely don't think their deadline should be extended by the full 11 days.

Many teams use the first week or more to design their robots.

I'd say call the first week design time and give them 4 extra days.

[JaneYoung]

It's my understanding from talking with mentors from different international teams, that this can happen. They receive their KOP later than the teams here in the US that don't have to have the KOPs shipped.

Teams learn to work with that and it is never easy. Teams in other countries may also have difficulty receiving the game piece in a timely fashion.

Keep in mind though, that teams here have faced difficulties during build season. I remember teams in regions who didn't have access to their shop because of weather conditions that cancelled school for several days, forcing the teams to have to wait.

[sloteera]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Teams in other countries may also have difficulty receiving the game piece in a timely fashion.

Exactly Jane!
Some games like Lunacy we hadn't balls and the floor material to try our robot!!
A normal importation from USA takes 2 weeks at minimum to come here!

I have no doubt that this is most hard!!!

[vance]

Just yesterday our team captain, a mentor, and I were talking about how awful it would be if something like the ice storm had hit during build season. Our mentor responded that storms like that have happened, and FIRST has pushed the ship date back because of it. I don't know anything more specific than that, but customs are something FIRST can foresee, as opposed to a storm.

[Racer26]

FIRST has, in the past redefined ship date in light of extreme weather conditions, however, i doubt they will do it for a single team.

[BEEKMAN]

Honestly, we haven't even youched our KoP yet....i could see if you liker, wern't able to see the kickoff video untill then, but a lot of work can still be done before you get teh KoP

[GaryVoshol]

As I recall, when the ship date was changed it was because the storm was on ship day. Either UPS wasn't coming to pick up robots, or the school was closed and locked up tight so the team didn't have access to be able to ship.

I concur with the others, this is a hazard for international teams and they adjust to it.

By the way, they're competing in Isreal. If they delay shipping for 11 days, they only have 8 days before the start of competition. They probably need all 19 days to get the bot from Bosnia to Isreal.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

As I recall, when the ship date was changed it was because the storm was on ship day. Either UPS wasn't coming to pick up robots, or the school was closed and locked up tight so the team didn't have access to be able to ship.

It's actually been changed twice. 2003 was weather as noted above. Pretty much the entire Northeast couldn't get to their robots, and if they could, FedEx couldn't. (CA teams enjoyed the bonus time...)

In 2004, the deadline was extended for all teams due to massive KOP issues. A lot of teams that year had missing parts, or something like that, even though they all got the KOP.

It's never been changed because one team, or one country, or anything like that got a KOP over a week after Kickoff.

To give some hope, one of the 2005 World Champs didn't cut metal for their custom frame until the end of Week 4/beginning of Week 5. Other teams were getting their custom frames back from powdercoating at that time. You should be using any time without a KOP to brainstorm, design, and plan for manufacturing. That way, when you get the KOP, everything falls into place and you can build in a week or two.

[sloteera]

But we are talking about a rookie team in another country!!

They need to familiarize with system and softwares as soon as possible!
Imagine a rookie team that never had seen a Labview Interface, for example....
How long do you think they will take to learn how to use the software??

I think that they will need at least one week to learn how to manipulate the software!!!

[Racer26]

The only thing that strikes me about this as being a special case is that they're a rookie team, in Bosnia. I don't know of any Bosnian veteran teams that could help them out.

[IKE]

I would be opposed to an extension past the Week1 competition.

[Tristan Lall]

Any deadline change would result in some sort of disparity between this team and all of the others—of course, receiving the KOP late is a significant disparity in its own right, especially for a rookie team which is likely to have depended on its contents to perform even cursory design and prototyping work.

Something like this should depend on why the delay occurred. If the team was allowed to register after the deadline as a courtesy, there may not have been enough time to handle the logistics. On the other hand, if they were not a late registrant, I think FIRST should probably have anticipated that shipping might not be straightforward. Assuming the team registered on time, and is paying for shipping (as teams can do, if they're not picking it up at a kickoff event), timely receipt of their materials would be a wholly reasonable expectation.

There's also the question of whether someone didn't fill out the required forms or customs manifests, or didn't do so in the right language—it's not improbable that the team and/or FIRST could have made an innocent error there. I'm not sure how Bosnia handles these things, but even when dealing with Canada-U.S. shipping, it's important to itemize the contents, indicate the value, and describe the expected use (especially if not for resale).

I suspect this is one of those times when you want to just pay a customs broker to handle everything for you—if that's what FIRST did, and it still arrived late, there's probably not much that can be done, except to ship earlier next year.

I wouldn't be opposed to a short extension, if it was clear (to FIRST) that this wasn't the team's own fault, but a full 11 days is a bit too optimistic. If FIRST is unwilling to contemplate the possibility of an extension of any sort, then perhaps a partial refund is in order—certainly at least the cost of shipping.


Now, on the subject of late kit arrivals every year, that's simply unacceptable. When you understand the problem (because it happened last year), and still can't avoid it, you're doing it wrong.

In terms of a long-term resolution to this issue, maybe there could be a note in the list of deadlines explaining that registrants from outside North America who haven't paid by early November should not expect their KOP to arrive in-country by the kickoff date. If the registrants do pay early, FIRST would have an extra month to put together an early shipment of whatever KOP parts it has on hand at that point, and the team would get the bulk of its materials on time. At least this way, the teams would be forewarned, and have the option to resolve it. (It's not totally fair, because they'd have to raise funds faster than everyone else, but at least it doesn't interfere with the build season.)